For years, the state-funded Russian TV channel RT had broadcast its slickly produced English-language news programmes over the airwaves in the Washington area.

But in early February, the network was taken off the air by a northern Virginia TV station. RT had remained on area cable channels until midnight on Sunday when the station permanently closed.

RT blames the loss of the broadcasts on the network having to register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department in November – something that many media outlets with substantial backing from a foreign government have been required to do.

“Although we are not at liberty to disclose the details, we know that this decision was linked to RT’s forced registration as a ‘foreign agent’ in the US,” Anna Belkina, RT’s deputy editor-in-chief, said in an email last week.

But the television station and the owner of the frequency on which RT was broadcast cite business decisions, not the US government.

The station, WNVC in Fairfax, shut down because the frequency on which it was broadcast had been sold. Sunday’s closure pulled the plug on about a dozen digital broadcast channels that offered international programming.

The channels were also transmitted by the region’s cable providers. And despite going off the air in February, RT had remained on cable – where the vast majority of its television viewers were – until the station’s demise.